Introduction

The identification of connections within and across different disciplines is among the most important shifts in recent modernist studies. One factor impacting on this cross-fertilisation is that of contextualisation, where individual theatre practitioners and their practices are treated not as separate entities but, as Franco Ruffini puts it when discussing Stanislavsky, as creating ‘a space next to deserving others, a small entry but within a large world’. Apart from Schino’s metaphoric web, Christopher Balme’s use of network theory – particularly the critical terms that it proposes – is another helpful tool to articulate connections within modernism. Balme uses network theory to discuss the complex network – based on shipping timetables, telegrams and communication, contracts, repertoires, commerce, politics of locality, etc. – that made the itinerant theatre of Maurice E. Bandmann operative across the vast geographical space spanning from London to Japan.